Pages

Saturday, 28 August 2010

Life In The UK...Neighbours

For the first time in 5 years, I am back to the car-less status I held when I first arrived in the UK..and I had to do my first sans car grocery shop. The trouble is that now I have to plan my shop and stick to the list with considerable rigor as there are 3 important things to manage: My items fitting in the 2 shopping bags I take, the even distribution of their weight between the 2 bags and actually carrying said weight to the bus stop and then from the bus stop to home.

You see, the bus back up Kingston Hill is fine but that walk up the hill, down the hill and up the hill again to home is a killer at the best of times and if the shop has gone awry, well, it ain't pretty! So today, I was ready with my small-ish, well-planned list and on the way, I knocked on J's door to do the neighbourly thing and find out whether there was anything he wanted me to pick up for him.

Well...his few items grew and grew until his list WAS bigger than mine. But it still all looked do-able so off I set, list in hand...but milk, orange juice, pasta sauce and soup (just to name a few) are not exactly light so let's just say there was a bit of mental f-ing and blinding going on as I walked from Sainsbury's to the bus stop and from the bus stop to home.

Next time, I might stop being so bloody independent and 'I can do it' and get him to take me. We could have a date night at the supermarket! Or not...